On the Road

WHEN THE TGV LETS YOU DOWN

Because I go back and forth between Nice and Paris, I no longer spend time exploring the rest of France as I did years ago when I was a “newbie.” I was explaining this to my daughter as we were having coffee at the Gare de Lyon Wednesday morning about to board the train to Nice. Then, the reader board at the station only had trains going to two destinations, neither of which were Nice.

Something was definitely wrong. Announcements started to pour out of the loudspeakers that the electrical lines had been damaged due to a storm in the area near Lyon and the trains would be delayed. At that point, our train was delayed one hour. After one hour it was delayed another hour and the hour after that, it was delayed another hour until a notice came in that all TGV trains had been fully cancelled.

Meanwhile, we had purchased a ton of food for lunch to eat on the train at Prêt A Manger. Then while waiting, scored a seat at one of the cafés and had breakfast. Then realizing we had a much longer wait than anticipated, we decided to go up to the bar in Le Train Bleu where it would be a lot more pleasant while we waited for the news about our departure. It was already getting a bit stupid.

Over yet another coffee and another breakfast, and preparing for what was likely to come—a cancellation of the trains—we investigated alternative ways of getting to Nice. Airfares were about 1,000€ per person on Air France. easyJet had nothing. Nope…I wasn’t doing that. Rental cars from Gare de Lyon were no longer available (other people may have had the same idea) but we found a car at Gare Saint-Lazare for a whopping 400€ for 24 hours to be dropped off in Nice, not including gas and tolls! (The price for an automatic in France is double that of a manual drive car, but my daughter has never learned to drive one!)

What the hell? It was our only chance of getting there, so we hopped in a taxi and headed across town to Gare Saint-Lazare. What an adventure (!) and it had barely begun. We had now spent five hours getting nowhere fast.

Sixt gave us a really nice upgraded vehicle—a Citroën Aircross SUV. It took at least an hour just to get out of Paris, but once on the road, we headed south giggling most of the way about the crazy adventure we were on, wanting to arrive in Nice in time for our next adventure on Friday…the three days we had planned to visit some regional high spots, again by car…Day 1) Italy, Day 2) the Alps and Day 3) Saint-Tropez.

The drive to Nice from Paris is 9.5 hours via Lyon, without stopping. Our starting time was 2 p.m.. So on route, I searched for a charming town in which to stop, have dinner and spend the night, with the idea of getting a bit further than half way. Using a variety of websites and apps, and after quite a bit of research with the help of Patty Sadauskas, we reserved what appeared to be a charming B&B just south of Lyon using Booking.com for about 100€: La Petite Sorbonne.

Still giggling about our little adventure, a 9.5+ hour drive (not counting all the stops along the way), I was finally getting to see more of France this way than the countryside I normally see from the window of the TGV. My wish was getting fulfilled. Along the way, we endured two seriously strong rain storms, one hailing like crazy hammering the car and rendering us crawling very slowly with emergency blinkers flashing. No wonder the trains weren’t running! We learned first hand why!

The owner of La Petite Sorbonne was not prepared to feed us dinner on such short notice, but François was very kind on the phone to suggest a restaurant nearby—l’Auberge de Lupé. We didn’t land there until close to 9 p.m.—seven hours in the car and we were just a bit more than half way to Nice. The Autoroute is beautiful and pristine, but getting off the highway is the best way to really see France La Profonde. Lyon was a flash in the pan as the route has you whizzing through it, but on the other side were fairly high hills striped with vineyards. The plants seemed oddly shaped—unusually tall rather than the branches stretching across wires so they touch one another, as in other parts of France.

(It is impossible for me to see vineyards now without thinking about Patty once having called them “wine plants” when the word “vineyards” didn’t come to mind. She had the right idea!)

L’Auberge de Lupé was nothing to write home about, but La Petite Sorbonne in medieval stone village, Malleval, was our big surprise. When we were researching for charming towns south of Lyon, it didn’t show up on the Google radar. It must be one of France’s little secrets. Even Googling it won’t bring up much information about it.

It is a small town perched on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Batalon gorges in the Pilat massif with little evidence of its origins. Some authors trace the origins back to two families: the Artauds and the Adémars, mentioned in a 10th-century Viennese document; another hypothesis cites the Arostagnie (now Rostaing). The origins of the B&B are steeped in the origins of the village. Owners Juan and François, who purchased and restored the entire compound about 1.5 years ago, fell madly in love with it and moved their lives from Lyon to this tiny stone village with the idea of welcoming people like us.

The couple couldn’t have been more adorable, and the accommodations were way more charming than we even imagined possible. The next morning over breakfast on the outdoor patio and before leaving for our final drive into Nice, we got a tour of the very historical aspects of the property which go down stone steps many levels and include a well within the confines of the property. It was exactly what we had hoped for to make our trek to Nice as delightful as possible.

By 2 p.m. on Thursday we landed in Nice and turned in the car to the Sixt office at the Promenade des Anglais. Sixt gets a thumbs up for very pleasant, helpful staff and a great vehicle. Even though we were exhausted and couldn’t do more than bathe and order take-out from Sushi House, if we hadn’t driven, we would never have made it to Nice as soon as only one day late. All the trains that were running that next day were fully booked, as one might have expected.

TO ITALY AND BACK

As was our plan, the next day we picked up another rental car, this time from Europcar. Both rental agencies are located steps from my apartment—one thing I like so much about living so central. It’s all right there at my toes. Day 1 of our little adventure was to drive to Italy…first to Ventimiglia to go to the Friday morning open-air market, then go to lunch in Bordighera, and spend the afternoon in San Remo.

Getting out of Nice took a lot longer than we expected as the GPS had us going in the wrong directions to take the fastest route rather than the scenic route, which I know like the back of my hand without GPS. There are times it’s best to just use your own brain and let go of the GPS control. However, it gave us a tour of a part of Nice I hadn’t seen before, so one could count that as a plus. Our goal was to go along the water the entire way, following the Number 600 bus route which takes you from central Nice all the way to Menton along the “Basse Corniche!”

The coastline from Nice to Menton is, in my opinion, the single most beautiful developed coastline in the world. I challenge anyone to find a more stunning landscape of sea, mountains, ports, houses, villas and apartment buildings passing through Nice, Villefranche-sur-Mer, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Eze, Cap d’Ail, Monaco, Roquebrune, Cap Martin and Menton. The view of Villefranche-sur-Mer and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat from the Basse Corniche is what I call “The Million Dollar View.”

The moment we crossed into Italy, traffic came to a virtual halt as hordes of people were headed to the market. It is considered the largest market in Italy and is a tradition and an institution for Italians, for the French living on the French Riviera and for all tourists who choose the Riviera for their holidays. With the parking looking ominous and the temperature at a mid-summer high, we decided to forego the market and go directly to Bordighera for lunch. We’ve done the market before and there wasn’t anything in particular we needed from it, so a word to the wise: if you make the market your goal, take the train! The station is just steps away, the trip is about one hour and it couldn’t be easier or cheaper.

We had re-booked lunch at Bistro 96,thanks to its 10 rating on Google and the photos of the food that looked delicious and inviting. Located just a block from the Bordighera train station, it would be easy to get to without a car. Even though it was not the waterfront trattoria experience I was originally thinking of, it was a gourmet delight in the comfort of an air-conditioned space with impeccable service. I’d happily do it again sometime.

The beach in Bordighera is not as inviting as a beach on the French Riviera. I say it every time I cross into Italy and immediately see the difference between a well taken care of France and an anarchistic Italy. France is pristine and pretty perfect, as well as classy and sophisticated. The Italian side is more middle class and clearly needs work to bring it up to the same standard. The difference between the two sides is acute. While Italy is charming and the Italians warm and inviting, getting anything done is a challenge, so I joke that you live in France, you go to Italy to eat pasta and drink their amazing coffee, then you go home to France for living!

San Remo was easy and parking wasn’t too difficult to find in the center of town, but the summer heat made walking around and shopping not as much fun as it might be another time of year. We donned our sun hats and found a few wonderful shops on the main pedestrian street—one selling personal care products and another just for coffee, where I scored a couple bags of Kimbo coffee that comes from Naples—it’s the best! These were some of the things we’d hoped to find in Ventimiglia at the market.

AN ALPINE ADVENTURE

The A8 autoroute took us home to Nice in a jiffy, where we planned for the next day’s excursion…to the French Alps. I had taken the same road last September with a friend and wanted to show Erica the incredible scenery, even knowing it would be a more than full day of driving.

It’s a bit less than two hours north of Nice to Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée, a ski town close to the Mercantour National Park through the most beautiful mountain passes I may ever have seen in my life. The roads are not for the faint of heart. There are some serious hairpin turns, narrow roads with no shoulders that drop-downs hundreds or thousands of feet, with no one or any sign of human life except for the many bikers, both motor and manual, on the road. Like everywhere in France, the roads are impeccable, immaculate and well-marked. It takes no time at all to move out of the seascape to the mountainscape, mindbogglingly that there is such a contrast all within such easy and fast reach of one another.

Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée is 1,140 meters above sea level, but Saint-Dalmas-le-Selvage nearby is 1,500 meters above. That’s pretty high up even if only one-third as high as Mont Blanc, France’s highest peak at 4,808 meters (15,774 feet). Still, there’s no doubt you feel on top of the world as you slowly but surely climb up to the top of the peaks.

The town was busy hosting a summer festival with a band stand set up in front of the Mairie, but we managed to find parking and score a table at one of the town’s best restaurants—l’Ardoise du Comptoir. Both the Octopus Salad and Leg of Lamb we ordered were both beautifully presented and delicious—not the usual bistro fare—all set in the lovely Alpine town.

Other towns along this “Route de la Bonette” are worth a visit given the time. At this point, you either head back to Nice or you go for the gold and make it a more than full day by circling to other mountain towns. That’s what we decided to do. After lunch, we headed west to Barcelonnette along one of France’s craziest drives! You must be the kind of driver who can handle such roads with confidence, who can take hairpin turns will make your hair curl as tight. But the vistas are breathtaking, and are amazingly different as you wind through the mountain passes.

Along the way you pass the beautiful Cascade de Vens, a substantial waterfall just at the edge of the road. Just a bit further is the Camp des Fourches, a mountain barracks located at an altitude of 2,291 meters. It is a surprising punctuation of what is mostly barren and steep mountainsides. There are 26 small buildings, built between 1896 and 1910 and improved until the Second World War. Twenty of them are virtually identical and have the appearance of chalets but, given the different materials used, were certainly not built at the same time. Although located in the immediate vicinity of the Col-des-Fourches outpost, which was attacked in June 1940 and September 1944, the camp itself does not appear to have been affected by the fighting. It’s a bit creepy if not fascinating a sight.

Then, one doesn’t expect to be hit in the face with Mexican culture upon landing in an alpine village, such as Barcelonnette, but that’s exactly you will discover. The signs are everywhere on the streets and in the shops. Every year in August, Barcelonnette gets a taste of Mexican customs, music and gastronomy through free shows, street performances and workshops roused by mariachi melodies, flamboyantly dressed dancers and an insight into Aztec culture…believe it or not. This has taken place there for almost 40 years. The strange thing is “why!?” According to what I could find, in the 19th-century, several thousand of its inhabitants left for the adventure of Mexico. Today the town has preserved an impressive architectural heritage from that era, characterized by numerous villas, that they call “Les Mexicains!” These beautiful bourgeois homes, commissioned by emigrants who returned home with their fortunes made, bear witness to Barcelonnette’s deep-rooted links with Mexico.

We chose to take a different road down the mountains back to Nice, through the town of Guillaumes where we stopped to have dinner, which was an entirely different kind of scenery than our ride north. Each step of the way brought a different landscape and experience. The mountains are powerful and intimidating, at least to me. As we watched the bikers pedal up the hills carrying little more than a phone and a flask of water, we wondered why they would take on such a challenge—the cool of our car was more our speed and plenty adventuresome enough!

I’ll tell you this…if you want to live in a remote spot on the planet, this is it. There is not much humanity in these mountains, nor much in the way of amenities, except perhaps some Mexican sombreros! I couldn’t imagine such a life, where getting anything as simple as a baguette would take an hour’s drive along such precarious roads…but we were happy to have seen and experienced it, even just for a few hours. Our day up into the Alps and back took about 12 hours including all the stops, but worth every minute of the adventure.

Sunday we had planned to meet a friend in Saint-Tropez, but our four days of driving had taken its toll on us and we recuperated in the cool of “Le Matisse.”

A la prochaine…